A portable Franciscan manuscript containing two collections of sermons, one for the liturgical year [de tempore] and the other for the saints’ days [de sanctis], written in Italy in the last quarter of the thirteenth century. There are frequent references to Franciscan saints, Francis, Clare and Anthony of Padua, as well as to the wars between Anjou and Aragon over Sicily. J. Schneyer lists only two other manuscripts of this collection, Florence B.N. MS B. 2. 1026 and Milan, Ambrosiana MS Y. 20.

The manuscript is a striking witness to the change in the format of books brought about by the Mendicant Orders in answer to their need for small portable manuscripts, Bibles, distinction collections, and sermon cycles to help them preach while on their itinerant missionary work.

Unbound, the manuscript provides a useful example of the make-up of quires, and of the dimensions of the bifolium and the written space when flat.

R.H. & M.A. Rouse MS 3